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Selwyn Birchwood—Exorcist—Alligator Records—ASIN :
B0BXYJ9HPW

This album like its predecessor the excellent “Living in a Burning
House’”is produced by Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy, Joe
Bonamassa, Joe Louis Walker). Opener ‘Done Cryin’’ is a

traditional blues with Selwyn’s throaty vocals and Albert King-
style biting lead guitar, Florida-born Selwyn then takes a
jaundiced look at his home state with ‘Florida Man’ – “Down
where rebel flags meet Mickey Mouse, down where the Wild

West meets the Dirty South…” This is very much modern blues
- despite Selwyn’s traditional sounding vocals and guitar playing
influenced by greats like Buddy Guy and Albert Collins - his lyrics reflect current issues and
trends but delivered with a touch of humour and all wrapped-up in Mr. Hambridge’s very slick
and polished production.

The Hendrix-like title track references the blues’ obsession with witchcraft and the swampy
‘Horns Below Her Halo’ continues this theme with the lyric “I think Satan must be a woman,
that’s why they call him Lucif-her”. Despite the title ‘Hopeless Romantic’ is a funky track with
stabbing brass and skipping lead guitar, while ‘Plenty More to be Grateful For’ is a B.B.
King-style slow blues. ‘Swim At Your Own Risk’ is a stop-time blues with fuzz guitar and ‘Call

Me What You Want To’ is a very traditional-sounding jump blues with the excellent band locking
in behind Selwyn. The band is Donald Wright or Andrew Gohman (bass), Regi Oliver (sax), Ed
Krout and Jim McKaba (keyboards) and Byron Garner (drums).

This is a fine album that demonstrates Selwyn’s excellent vocals and guitar playing and also

his considerable song-writing talents – all the songs here are originals – as well as a very
accomplished band and great production from Tom Hambridge.

Graham Harrison

Various Artists—Delmark 70th Blues Anthology— Delmark

It is very tempting just to leave the image of the record sleeve
and write nothing “a picture is worth a thousand words” as
someone famous once said. But here are a few words, just the
same.

This one’s a stunner and there is not duff track here: Big Time
Sarah (Sarah Streeter), Buddy Guy, Dinah Washington, Jimmy
Dawkins, Jimmy Johnson, Junior Wells, Little Walter, Magic Sam,
Memphis Slim, Otis Rush, T-Bone Walker are here. Some of the
best blues music, on the label (originally called Delmar) founded
in 1953, by then 21-year-old college student Bob Koester in St. Louis, Missouri out of a record
store he owned on Delmar Blvd. In 1958, Koester moved to Chicago and ran the label out of
the basement of its new record shop, the 'Jazz Record Mart'.

In 1960, when Koester was threatened with a lawsuit he renamed the label 'Delmark Records'
From the mid-1960s on, Delmark became a major force on the Chicago scene, as the label
released many albums by artists associated with the Association for the Advancement of
Creative Musicians (AACM).